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About our Leadership

Suzanne Dubus

Read Suzanne’s CV here

Suzanne Dubus is the Chief Executive Officer of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center and has led the organization since 1997. Suzanne believes in a strengths-based and survivor-led approach and is dedicated to fostering an environment where people from all backgrounds and lived experiences thrive and feel they belong. Her commitment to centering social justice and equity is a guidepost for the organization’s work across its four program areas: Survivor Services, Youth Empowerment Services, Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention, and Intimate Partner Abuse Education.

Suzanne was named a Champion of Change by the White House in October 2011 and the 2016 Woman of the Year by Delamano, Inc. Under her leadership, the work of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center has been featured in numerous publications including The New Yorker, NBC Boston, U.S. News & World Report, The Harvard Gazette, Huffington Post, CNN, Cosmopolitan, and in the books No Visible Bruises, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, and A Call to Action. Suzanne has been featured on numerous podcasts and radio shows, including NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Weekend Edition.

Articles authored by Suzanne have been published in the Domestic Violence Report and Women You Should Know; recently, she co-authored a research article in the Journal of Social Work Research, titled Development and Testing of the Danger Assessment for Law Enforcement (DA-LE): An intimate partner violence risk assessment for use with Domestic Violence High Risk Teams.

Suzanne graduated from University of Massachusetts in Boston with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and ethics, and from the University of Florida’s Certified Paralegal Studies Program.

Kelly Dunne

Read Kelly’s CV here

Kelly Dunne is Executive Director of the Geiger Institute. In 2003, after a tragic domestic violence homicide/suicide of one of her clients, Kelly created the nationally acclaimed Domestic Violence High Risk Team Model (DVHRT).

Kelly has over 25 years of experience working in the field of domestic violence, including direct advocacy work, program development and non-profit management. She has extensive experience training to a wide range of audiences including law enforcement and judiciary as well as developing and delivering customized technical assistance to communities across the nation on our intimate partner homicide reduction strategies.

Kelly has published articles for the Domestic Violence Report, Social Work Research and Sage Publications. Kelly’s work has also been featured in numerous publications including the New Yorker, Huffington Post, Slate Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and in several books including: No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Synder, and Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath.

Kelly graduated from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology.

Laura Harris

Laura Harris is Managing Director of Crosby Company of New Hampshire, where she partners with a single family to advance investment, philanthropic, and personal objectives, and to collaboratively develop and execute the family’s long‑term strategic plan.

Previously, Laura served as Chief Administrative Officer of Watermark Estate Management Services, LLC, supporting the private and public entities of Bill and Melinda Gates. In that role, she oversaw finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, communications and public relations, facilities and fleet, creative services and gifting, and other shared services across multiple LLCs.

Earlier in her career, Laura held senior leadership roles at several Fortune‑ranked public companies, including Kraft Foods, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom/Paramount Pictures, and Tenneco/Apollo, building deep expertise in complex organizations operating at global scale.

Laura holds an MBA in International Business Law and Finance from Clemson University and an MBA from the International Institute of Business Studies (CIMBA). She earned her undergraduate degree in English and Theater from Marquette University.

She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Berwick Academy as Development Chair, and on the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center Board and Geiger Institute Committee. Laura also serves on executive committees of trusts supporting ultra‑high‑net‑worth families.

Laura is also actively engaged in animal welfare and protection, and supports environmental organizations focused on the preservation of public lands and climate stewardship.

Sally Green

Sally spent most of her career in the Federal Reserve System, serving as Chief Operating Officer at the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank and previously in numerous executive roles at the Boston Bank. She also had national responsibility for the Fed’s check clearing and automated clearinghouse payments services and was a member of the System’s Financial Services Policy Committee. Early in her career she worked for a consulting firm on a multi-year housing project that underpinned the development of the federal Section 8 housing program.

Sally has extensive Board and community leadership experience. Internationally, she currently serves on the Board of Search for Common Ground, the largest nongovernmental peacekeeping organization in the world. Previously, she served on the ChildFund International Board and chaired its finance and audit committee, with a focus on helping vulnerable children worldwide. 

She is also currently on the Boards of Essex County Habitat for Humanity and the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, where she chairs the Geiger Institute Committee. As a former director of the Cambridge Trust Company, she had responsibilities in the audit, governance, compensation, and trust areas. In Richmond, Sally supported a number of community organizations focused on women and children including as chair of the Board of the Boys & Girls Clubs and of the Women’s Leadership Initiative for the United Way.

Sally holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Mount Holyoke College and a Masters in the Science of Management from the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

   To read more about the entire Geiger Institute team, visit this page on our website.

Onboarding Materials

Meet the board of advisors

Ed Bachrach
Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD, RN
Janet Clarkson Davis
Lauren Davis
Lili Elkins
Chris Little
Sydney McComas
Rachel Louise Snyder
Mark Wynn

Why the Geiger Institute? Why Now? 

New solutions are needed. Intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide disproportionately impact certain communities. While rates of women killed by intimate partners declined in the U.S. between 1980 and 1995, this trend reversed and, as of 2008, there has been a 5% increase in the proportion of women killed by an intimate partner since 1980. Further, Black women are murdered by men at a rate more than 2.5 times higher than white women and 61% of all homicides of Hispanic women were IPV-related, a higher proportion than any other ethnic group. Now, there is even more urgency as the risk and severity of domestic violence has increased due to the environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We want to again work to identify and close systemic gaps, closely examine the effectiveness of approaches in groups experiencing higher rates of intimate partner violence and customize our work in Black and brown communities to make sure they have pathways to safety. There is an unprecedented opportunity to look at how we can better partner with communities and bring together effective practices, the latest research and strong partnerships with sharpened focus and attention in order to affect change and have greater impact in reducing domestic violence homicide. 

Origin of the DVHRT Model

In 2002, while advocates at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center were trying to help a woman named Dorothy find safety from her abusive husband, she was killed in her home as her daughter was on the phone with the police. Her husband was released by the court four days before on low-cash bail. After Dorothy was killed, the advocates set out to understand where the system had failed her and how to prevent this from happening again.

From this event, the Domestic Violence High Risk Team (DVHRT) was born. The model is based on the research of Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell from Johns Hopkins University that identified the risk factors present when a woman is killed by their intimate partner. The team-based model looks to identify and close systemic gaps and bring together community partners that previously operated in silos.

The first DVHRT in Newburyport, Massachusetts is still in place today. In the ten years prior to its implementation, there were eight domestic violence-related deaths in the greater Newburyport community; since starting in 2005, the team has accepted 200 high-risk cases resulting in zero homicides.

Working in collaboration with law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, judges, advocates and community leaders, the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center has now trained communities in over 200 jurisdictions across the U.S. in the DVHRT model as well as the Danger Assessment for Law Enforcement Tool (DA-LE). The Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) recognized the DVHRT Model as a “leading promising practice” in intimate partner homicide prevention.